In March Teausant was en route to Canada and near the border texted a friend who told him “if I get myself out of the country everything will be taken care of, they’ll pay for me to go over there, they’ll give me a gun.” He had been in the National Guard but had not brought along a weapon. His friend also told him “They’ll give me everything I could possibly want. They’ll take care of my family, and that I can always come back to America when this is over.” The friend turned out to be an FBI informer, and that led to his arrest.

“I’m not going to say that I’m completely innocent and I have no fault in this,” Teausant told the reporters. “Some of it is my fault, yes. But then again I also feel that if the informant hadn’t come along I would have just been making idle boasts and I wouldn’t have done anything.” But there’s more to the story.

Teausant told the reporters that while living in Montana he met a beautiful Muslim woman who would speak only to Muslim men. That spurred his interest in Islam, but it wasn’t only romantic. The zealous convert came to believe his daughter’s day care center was “Zionist.” He wanted to blow it up but claims he told the informant he would only bomb the place when nobody was there. Teausant doesn’t recall discussing any bomb attacks in Los Angeles but on fighting overseas he showed good recall. The newly minted Muslim soon became convinced that the government of Syria needed to be taken down.

“I wanted to go help fight for these people because the New Hampshire slogan is ‘Live Free or Die,’” he told the Bee reporters. “In 1775, we rebelled against Britain because we felt we were being tyrannized and conquered, so we wanted our own freedom. So I felt like I could try and help with that, and give the people freedom that they were fighting for.”

In May his lawyers argued that he would never make it to Syria and never provide support for anyone. He now tells the Bee his support for ISIS was the informer’s suggestion and that “at the time they were not doing the brutal stuff that they’re doing now,” adding that he is “absolutely abhorred at that Foley thing. I did not see that coming.”

That is a stretch, even for someone reportedly diagnosed with schizophrenia. That “Foley thing” would be a beheading, something Islamic jihadists have been doing for centuries for such offenses as being non-Muslim. So despite claims he is “kind of like a cracked egg,” the authorities are sticking to their guns. They told reporters that they reviewed all the evidence, conducted the investigation properly, and are prosecuting the case by the book.

Teausant’s case has drawn drew no comment from Mohamed Abdul Azeez, leader of the Sacramento Area League of Associated Muslims (SALAM) Islamic Center and frequently interviewed in the local press. The SALAM center co-hosts events with CAIR and in 2009 Abdul Azeez was the recipient of the FBI’s community service award “for preventing violence, creating understanding, bringing people together.”

Last year after the Tsarnaev brothers bombed the Boston Marathon Abdul Azeez lamented the “explosions in Boston,” but told reporters “I don’t want to have to apologize for any crime that’s been committed.” The California Muslim leader said “I feel similar to a gun owner worried about gun laws all the time because people are shooting people, or a Jew who has to worry about the atrocities being committed in Israel.”

The articulate Abdul Azeez, who holds degrees from Ohio State and the University of Chicago, has remained quiet about Boko Haram in Nigeria and the beheading of James Foley by ISIS. Meanwhile, Nicholas Teausant, who wanted to support ISIS and blow up a “Zionist” day care center, remains upbeat.

“Even if they gave me the maximum 15 years I’d come out of prison at 35,” he told the Bee reporters. “That still leaves me the rest of my life to go to college and get a Ph.D., do what I want and be with my family.”